Field, House, Garden, Grave

Permanent event at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki in Thessaloniki, Greece

The museum's open-air exhibition welcomes you to take a stroll around the ancient city

The antiquities presented here date from the 2nd to the 4th c. AD, an era of great prosperity for Thessaloniki.

The first part of the exhbition presents sarcophagi and altars from the city's cemeteries. These burial monuments were either imported or locally made and were located along the main roads or placed within privately-owned enclosures, known as topoi, with other monuments, stelae or statues.

The second part of the exhibition shows a reconstructed rich urban house of Thessaloniki during the Roman Imperial era. Modern construction materials were used for the representation but the mosaic floors are genuine. The House (domus) in Thessaloniki, though influenced by Rome, carries the tradition of opulent Hellenistic housing. The dining room (triclinium), the bedrooms (cubicula), the reception area for visitors (tablinum) are all centered around an inner courtyard with a peristyle. The walls and floors were decorated with wall-paintings and impressive mosaics. Other auxiliary spaces such as storerooms, kitchen, bathrooms and lavatories were also present.

The honorary altars presented in the third part of the exhibition are bases for the statues of prominent citizens, erected in public spaces and buildings.